Teleconferencing and video-teleconferencing are known in the art. The common conferencing topology includes a plurality of terminals communicating via a hub. The hub receives the streaming content from all the terminals participating in the conference, mixes the content and sends the mixed content to each of the terminals. In many situations the server sends a different mix to different terminals. The need to communicate via the hub creates a delay, also known as latency.
A second, relatively newer, conferencing topology uses peer-to-peer networking. In this topology there is no hub, and each terminal sends its content stream to each terminal. Thus, there is no latency; however, each terminal may need to create a different stream according to the needs and limitations of each receiving terminal.
In a third conferencing topology the terminals connect to the peer-to-peer network via terminal proxy servers. The terminals transmit their content streams to their respective proxies. The proxies are connected as peers in the peer-to-peer network and exchange the content streams. The proxies receive content streams, create the content mixes and transmit them to their respective terminals. Thus the processing and the communication bandwidth requirements on the terminals are much smaller. Such topology is advantageous with mobile terminals where, power, processing power and bandwidth are relatively limited.
Hence, each of the conferencing topologies has its advantages and disadvantages. U.S. Pat. No. 7,016,673, US patent applications 20020091833, 20020119821, 20040133631, 20070058626, and 20080133535, and PCT application WO2008051974 are believed to represent the state of the art.
There is thus a widely recognized need for a mechanism for optimizing the conferencing mechanism, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a conferencing method and system devoid of the above limitations.